Navigational devices are becoming increasingly commonplace in the modern world. For example, navigational devices can be used for navigating a vehicle such as a car, boat, or airplane or for use when walking through an unfamiliar location.
Furthermore, as smartphones, tablets, or other computing devices become increasingly able to determine their own position in the world using GPS or other positioning systems, navigational devices are no longer limited to devices specifically designed with the sole-purpose of providing navigational instructions. Instead, navigational devices can include a large variety of computing devices capable of implementing one or more applications to provide near-instantaneous instructions for navigating from almost any location to any other location.
In particular, such applications often offer “turn-by-turn” navigational instruction, which provides navigation over a sequence of navigational maneuvers (e.g. driving maneuvers such as “turn right”). As an example, the sequence of maneuvers can be described by a group of textual entries that respectively describe the upcoming maneuvers. As other examples, the navigational device can provide a group of graphical icons that respectively represent the upcoming maneuvers or can output audio in the form of human speech that describes the upcoming maneuvers.
However, certain display methods implemented by current navigational devices can fail to provide users with an intuitive, user-friendly sense of the scale and relationship between the upcoming maneuvers. As an example, the navigational device may fail to indicate the distance between upcoming maneuvers or may provide the navigational instruction only upon approaching a predefined distance from the maneuver location.
However, if there are two maneuvers within relative proximity to one another, the navigation device may fail to provide sufficient advanced warning to enable the user to be in proper position or otherwise appropriately anticipate the maneuver. For example, a driver may be required to merge or change lanes immediately after a first maneuver in order to be in position to make a second maneuver. As such, if the navigational device fails to the give the driver appropriate notice, then the driver may miss the second maneuver.
As another example, in the instance that the navigational device provides the distance between upcoming maneuvers in a textual format, the user may struggle to mentally convert the textual distance information into a full comprehension of the physical distance. Alternatively, user effort to comprehend textual distances or time spent looking at the device display to read the text can undesirably distract the user from the navigational activity (e.g. driving the car).